


santa clause is excuse me what now

by quenive



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Insane Clown Posse - Freeform, M/M, Stridercest Secret Santa, a world of obvious romance, christmas striders in a christmas setting, they really love each other, we're talking at least one (1) ridiculous outfit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 10:32:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13211928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quenive/pseuds/quenive
Summary: “How’s it sitting on you?” you flutter your eyelashes.“Spartan, adjective,” the discomfort on his face is evident in its own little bizarre Strider way. Wincing, your gaze falls down onto the row of bells framing his stomach. He shakes his hips, paps his side, and points to his face. “Hey. Champ. My eyes are up here.”





	santa clause is excuse me what now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dutch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dutch/gifts).



> merry christmas abby! i was your stridercest secret santa this year and i hope you enjoy this little thing i whipped up for the occasion
> 
>  

If you were a bigger man, you'd fold all of your receipts in half. The two sides of each and every individual invoice would face each other while you impeccably align the edges and smoothen the overlap, then, with the most acute assiduity, you'd slip the bunch into your pocket and gently pap your thigh. Emptying your proverbial wallet leaves you with enough space for the good shit. Id est, money. Your brother's credit cards. Small wallet size pictures of your brother's various body parts (sentence said with the least fratricidey innuendo imaginable). It's a clean, safe place for all your various useful valuables. Some exchangeable for goods and services, others for recreational purposes.

 

But seeing as you are not the bigger man, you unsnarl the crumpled up bill you've been keeping in the bottom of your man purse and smooth your hand over it once, twice, to make it more readable. You are the tiniest man in this part of the dreamscape. And you intend to straighten the paper out and clear your throat before reading it, since you don't get to be the size of a salt grain without spicing up a few thanksgiving dinner turkeys.

 

"You've ditched the body harness?" you're... feigning disappointment here. Your eyebrows are, like, filling in your receding hairline and coloring way out of the lines. Tanking the rocket fuel is NASA's number one priority since, that shit? Burning rapidly. The checks go back in. You sigh, propping your chin onto both of your hands, elbows digging into thighs while your legs sit crossed.

 

"Ya," he mumbles out and grips the back of your sofa before his balance is completely lost. You notice him sneak a glance at a smuppet and most likely contemplate whether or not kicking it would end up to be bounteous. In the end he decides against it in favor of not falling flat on his ass in those dumb yet heartwarming digitigrade boots. "It was kinda chafing me to the point of an identity crisis. Was I a potato in a gigantic fishnet? A roped up bovine? My ID says Strider but the mirror speaks wormed soil." Then he kind of straightens up, but you still notice his firmer than necessary grip on the fabric. "Is that, uh. Is it okay?"

You think back to how long it took for the both of you to figure out which belt goes where and how difficult it was to actually get him into that thing, si multaneously giving the whole bovine thing a good run for its money. Complicated designs like that are commissioned; your moolah's already spent and he's being a reluctant calf. The hint of guilt in his tone throws you off. Fair, fair. The court allows it.

 

“I think you’re in the clear,” you flash him a smile, unveiling the tight T-shirt of your face’s pointy glasses. Comfortable, welcoming, the kind of smile you’d love to see the bodacious  massive dohoonkabhankoloos of were you ever insecure about a dumb reindeer suit your sibling got you to wear after you swore with the whole entirety of your heart that you can and will pull off better than he ever has. A mouthful for your brain this be not, and neither is the precious little bedazzled bit you shoved into his mouth 20 minutes ago but apparently it was too much for the guy’s jaw.

 

You peer up at him from behind the sofa he is currently gripping. He doesn’t see the way you reach for one of his hands before he jerks them both up to adjust his disproportionally large antlers. Yours get pulled back too, slowly, more subtle, ashamed of their saucy advantages. From that angle, his jaw looks spectacular.

 

Dave has absolutely nothing to be insecure about. His gait is that of a gazelle's, but only if the gazelle had a broken leg. And limped.

 

His eyes radiate nothing, for he is hiding them and your glasses don’t have a built-in x-ray. Yet.

 

And his getup is atrocious. It’s like a crocodile got into a fight with a fun fair fortune teller and looted her corpse. The heinous scalie suspenders match the equally grisly high waisted shorts in reindeer colors, cotton tail attached and all. And the bling. Oh the bling’s got you thinking of serenades to put the sleigh to rest, or preferably completely down. Thick gold bells on the belt loops all the way around his waist, tacky little silver buds up the fake leather garters ending with two flashing Christmas stars on the top. Seeing as Dave has some height on you the straps dig into his shoulders and sometimes the stars jingle loosely before he adjusts them. There’s a lot of adjusting going on here, so much that if you reach deep down into your childish sandbox of a blood pump, you can understand his reluctance to keep the sleigh pulling harness on. It was meant for you, after all.

 

Let’s avoid bringing up the collar he ripped off as soon as he noticed the motion sensors. Let’s avoid bringing up all the gorgeous melodies it played.

 

Let us.

 

“How’s it sitting on you?” you flutter your eyelashes.

 

“Spartan, adjective,” the discomfort on his face is evident in its own little bizarre Strider way. Wincing, your gaze falls down onto the row of bells framing his stomach. He shakes his hips, paps his side, and points to his face. “Hey. Champ. My eyes are up here.”

 

“As they should be,” you answer with sham innocence, going all out with that eyelash flutter you want him to verbally acknowledge.

 

“What?” he does the David Strider equivalent of scoff, i.e. you see his eyebrow arch up over the frame of his shades. They don’t work well with the getup but you hold yourself from commenting on the historical inaccuracy. Rudolph wore lingerie, not Stiller gifted apparel. “You got something in your eye there? Want me to blow in it?”   
  


“I want you to blow  _ something _ .”

 

He lovingly swats the back of your head and walks away with a jingle. As best as he can, at least. It’s like wearing high heels without the actual heel. If it had more support something in the back of your mind tells you he’d have less of an issue navigating himself and more of a problem controlling his ego. Without a limp to worry about a man becomes completely aware of how baller his thighs look. In this room you are the only one with enough self-awareness to dwell on personal appearance, so you focus on his instead.

 

You notice leg hair sticking up as goosebumps blanket over his legs. He rolls his shoulders and his arms stretch up for a grand pop. Yeah. His joints still sound better than yours have recently. It’s all the desk work, he tends to taunt you from an infuriatingly flexible yoga position. What’s he stuck on this week? Bikram?

 

“Should turn up the heat in this penthouse igloo I feel my balls crawling up my crotch like a spooked two headed turtle.”

 

“Surely it isn’t just the genuine alligator skin pants bench pressing your sac magique,” you turn away before you staring at him gets weird. Not that it wasn’t weird before but you definitely pride yourself on your ability to pinpoint the exact punkt of it becoming freaky. You pick the crusty greyish gunk from under your fingernails and examine it closely as you wait for a reply. 

 

What does your brother reply with?

 

_ Jingle clop, jingle clop, jingle clop crash fuck.  _

 

You jerk back and  _ oof _ at the image of Dave hugging the giant ass christmas tree with his face buried in a hung up decorative photo of Tommy Wiseau while Emma Watson stares intently from the side. 

 

“Should I give you guys some space?” You are adept at holding back your laughing. Dave tends to appreciate this at times.

 

“I was falling, I needed support, the tree stood there when no one else would,” he tries to push himself away from it, alas with no luck, for the fake structure lacks any sort of stability aside from the one Dave’s shoving down gives it.

 

“Thought Rudolph was like the red nosed radar when it comes to navigating through time and space.”

 

“This rein is in deer need of assistance.”

 

“Echolocation is the world’s strongest pair of glasses and though I advise against screeching at this godless time of night, I  _ am _ going to rightfully call the right to gently murmur a sensual  _ I told you so  _ while the collar makes you its bitch.”

 

“ _ Dirk _ .”

 

You stand up.

 

“Right.”

  
  
  


 

 

 

There’s nothing like picking up the scattered remains of a once proud Christmas tree on Christmas eve after guiding your evidently elderly brother to the sofa. Cross legged with the boots still firmly hugging his calves, the man sips on his mini marshmallow rum infused hot cocoa while you maid up the place. You don’t mind cleaning unless it’s your room’s organized mess you’re coerced into tidying up, so you do it, with a  [ little hum  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cQe77Q_74k) to really bring out the Shitscram spirit.

 

Dave hates it. You’re hiding the collar in his room.

 

“Does it always end up like this?” you ask once you’re finally down sitting next to him with a mug of scolding cocoa resting on your crotch. It’s actually just pleasantly warm cocoa. Like offer-hugs-in-autumn pleasantly warm. An inanimate object is hugging the outside of your clothed penis.

 

“Tree support giving away under the weight of my body’s massive girth leading to an amusing chain of ev -- oh don’t you fucking dare call me a f-”

 

“That’s not what I was opening my mouth for,” you assure him. “See I have this gift that tells me exactly when a joke is overused and this is getting to it, more or less.”

 

Your brother looks skeptical.

 

You were going to call him a fat bitch.

 

“Alright. And your point was?”

 

“Don’t know,” you shrug. He slowly takes your mug away from you as you talk to sniff and check for alcohol. There’s nothing in it to spice the drink up, usually, but he’s always careful. Ten out of nine times he offers you some. It’s the eve night thing. Go nuts. “We propose something genuinely amusing at the time of proposal, we go about that thing, usually ending up with one of us being absolutely, horrifyingly humiliated. No offense.”

 

“Taken,” Dave gets the rum bottle off the table and gestures it to you. You nod, he pours.

 

“And just when you think that, despite the urge to shove your head into the parquet like some urban ostrich, things are going okay, things  _ don’t _ go okay and we end up here. On this couch, in silence, sipping on whatever’s jolly this year.”

 

“Well yeah. Isn’t it practically tradition by this point?” he hands you your mug back. The cocoa smells more alive.

 

“That’s how you see it?”

 

“Isn’t that how it is?”

 

You think for a second while you sip. Isn’t it?

 

“I don’t think it is,” you conclude. His arm drops over your shoulder and he pulls you in against his body, squeezing you in a type of.. reassurance, you guess. So you try to relax and enjoy his warmth. He takes his sweet time replying. Sure glad the fireplace he’s playing on his gigantic living room flatscreen is crackling between the gaps. It’s the only thing illuminating the room aside from a few faint christmas lights, colors the both of you in a shade of orange a little too warm and too perfect. You think how the tree isn’t the only thing pining in this room, and how the needles poke even when you’re not touching them.

 

“Can’t read you,” his tone is genuine, the hand he’s hugging you with brushes up the hair above your ear. His knuckles graze your lobe and you’d wince if not for his hold keeping you latching onto every shred of chill your grabby little mittens can reach. “I’d make you hold that thought while I gather a forensic team to pick out the dead skin cells out of  _ Dirk I don’t know whether you mean that as a good or bad thing and at this point I’m too afraid to ask _ .”

 

You smile, really smile, and lean into him. Chapped lips press against five o’clock shadow while you mouth at his jaw in a lazy kiss. That’s it.  _ Baby steps _ , he says,  _ let the toddler waddle a bit before you give it a motorcycle _ . Rushing into things neither of you can handle isn’t on either of your wishlists.

 

“I think it’s a tier above, actually. Tradition is what your folks make you do just because their folks made them do it and it’s usually nowhere as fun as shitting out a pedagogical spiel convincing your sibling to dress up as a horned snake oil salesreindeer.”

 

“No?”

 

“But do you get me?”

 

“Yeah,” Dave papping your cheek an even number of times is what gives him away when he’s affectionate. You’re melting under it, you’re seeing Christmas cookie shapes and shiny stars, ignoring the actual one on his shoulder poking the back of your neck just a bit. Then he squeezes you in again and his body relaxes, reaching for the remote. “I got you.”

 

You catch half of Home Alone 2 and act excited over it as if this isn’t like the fourteenth time you’ve seen it. The only advantage to seeing something that many times is the ability to mute it and confidently voice over everyone’s lines. Tipsiness helped ignore all the failed jokes and missed chances but, you know, whatever. Always a chance next year.

 

He drank more than you had. Throughout the night his proverbial steel blanket unveils a much more genuine persona, a looser Bro not held back by rules he set for himself and is following as if his life is held up by the stems of coolness. Even the outfit starts inching into his welcome zone. You hope, at least, if his compliments on the design as a whole are anything to go by. The design is yours he is so, so proud of you, kid. You done well. 

 

His already full lips eventually redden due to alcohol, the bottle gets lighter and lighter as the hours get smaller. You like to catch a glimpse of them when you think he’s not looking.

 

Always a chance next year. Maybe even new year.

  
  
  
  



End file.
